Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Faculty Selected Works pagesCopyright (c) 2015 University of Massachusetts - Amherst All rights reserved.http://scholarworks.umass.edu/larp_sw
Recent documents in Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Faculty Selected Works pagesen-usWed, 18 Mar 2015 22:55:01 PDT3600Performance, Appearance, Economy, and Working Methodhttp://works.bepress.com/ahern_jack/14
http://works.bepress.com/ahern_jack/14Wed, 17 Dec 2014 08:55:59 PSTJack F. Ahern et al.Mainstreaming Climate in the Classroom: Teaching Climate Change Planninghttp://works.bepress.com/elisabeth_hamin/20
http://works.bepress.com/elisabeth_hamin/20Mon, 01 Dec 2014 12:56:17 PST
Climate change planning, both mitigation (reducing greenhouse gasses) and adaptation (designing built environments for changed climate conditions), is an area of emerging importance in both planning practice and education. This research examines the uptake of climate issues in planning education programs primarily in the U.S., and compares course content to leading climate change planning practice and research concepts. Studio and seminar courses are emerging in a variety of universities, and are addressing many of the key research concepts for mitigation and adaptation. Beyond stand-alone classes, the article argues the need to mainstream climate considerations in core planning curricula. Modeling this pedagogy will encourage our students to normalize climate considerations as they enter the profession.
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Elisabeth M. Hamin et al.Climate AdaptationPedagogyClimbing the Adaptation Planning Ladder: Barriers and Enablers in Municipal Planninghttp://works.bepress.com/elisabeth_hamin/19
http://works.bepress.com/elisabeth_hamin/19Mon, 01 Dec 2014 12:29:10 PST
Local municipal governments have a crucial role in helping communities adapt to climate change. Recognizing different levels of climate preparedness, this chapter analyzes what steps communities tend to follow when they move forward on climate adaptation, including prerequisites for planning and the selection of policies. Drawing on content analyses of local climate adaptation plans from the United States (US) and Australia, as well as interviews with municipal planners in both nations, the chapter explores the adaptation policy choices communities are making and explains the range of strategies local governments have used to move forward on a ‘ladder’ of climate adaptation, proceeding from awareness and constituency building activities through formal risk analyses and strategic planning for climate adaptation, through implementation through specific changes to land use planning and infrastructure investment. Factors found to support or hinder these efforts relate to political will, staff resources, technical information, and training in potential policy responses. Significant barriers include issues of property rights and sunk investment in vulnerable locations (particularly along the coast), as well as shifting community and political views about the reality of climate change. Overall, progress in municipal climate adaptation planning is patchy, and affected by wider policy frameworks and access to state or national level support. However, this chapter highlights opportunities for municipalities to move forward on climate adaption planning, despite local barriers to action.
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Elisabeth M. Hamin et al.Climate AdaptationLand UseBarriers to Municipal Climate Adaptation: Examples from Coastal Massachusetts' Smaller Cities and Townshttp://works.bepress.com/elisabeth_hamin/18
http://works.bepress.com/elisabeth_hamin/18Mon, 01 Dec 2014 11:33:53 PST
Problem, research strategy, and findings: Many global cities are making good progress on climate adaptation. There is less information, however, on climate adaptation among smaller cities and towns: Are their approaches similar when undertaking adaptation? Do the barriers they face mirror those of large cities? In this study, we undertake fine-grained empirical research on the perceptions of 18 municipal planners in 14 coastal cities and towns in Massachusetts; our fi ndings are thus limited to planners’ perceptions of efforts and barriers in one region of the United States. These communities are very early in the uptake of climate adaptation policies and use a range of approaches when they do begin adaptation, including planning, mainstreaming, or addressing current hazards. The planners interviewed reported that barriers to adaptation actions tend to be interconnected; for example, the strength of private property interests often limits local political leadership on the issue. Without such leadership, it is diffi cult for planners to allocate time and/or money to adaptation activities. It is also challenging to gain support from local residents for climate adaptation action, while a lack of accepted technical data complicates efforts. Takeaway for practice: In coastal Massachusetts, and perhaps elsewhere, local residents, planners, and their municipal bodies, as well as the states, must act in multiple ways to encourage the development of meaningful climate adaptation action in smaller cities and towns. Keywords: land use planning, climate change, adaptation, municipal, qualitative research
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Elisabeth M. Hamin et al.Climate AdaptationLand UseWindows of opportunity: addressing climate uncertainty through adaptation plan implementationhttp://works.bepress.com/elizabeth_brabec/31
http://works.bepress.com/elizabeth_brabec/31Fri, 17 Oct 2014 22:37:24 PDT
There is a pressing need for municipalities and regions to create urban form suited to current as well as future climates, but adaptation planning uptake has been slow. This is particularly unfortunate because patterns of urban form interact with climate change in ways that can reduce, or intensify, the impact of overall global change. Uncertainty regarding the timing and magnitude of climate change is a significant barrier to implementing adaptation planning. Focusing on implementation of adaptation and phasing of policy reduces this barrier. It removes time as a decision marker, instead arguing for an initial comprehensive plan to prevent maladaptive policy choices, implemented incrementally after testing the micro-climate outcomes of previous interventions. Policies begin with no-regrets decisions that reduce the long-term need for more intensive adaptive actions and generate immediate policy benefits, while gradually enabling transformative infrastructure and design responses to increased climate impacts. Global and local indicators assume a larger role in the process, to evaluate when tipping points are in sight. We use case studies from two exemplary municipal plans to demonstrate this method’s usefulness. While framed for urban planning, the approach is applicable to natural resource managers and others who must plan with uncertainty.
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Yaser Abunasser et al.Sustainable Land Use PlanningCommunity Commons: An analysis of the Gullah communities of South Carolinahttp://works.bepress.com/elizabeth_brabec/30
http://works.bepress.com/elizabeth_brabec/30Mon, 14 Jul 2014 11:50:00 PDT
Descended from slaves brought to the southeast United States between the early 17th and mid 19th centuries, the Gullah-Geechee of South Carolina and Georgia in the United States, have developed distinctive, culturally-expressive creole communities. Juxtaposed against their ancestor’s plantation slave villages, present-day settlements reveal deliberate creations of community and strong connections to place. The Gullah concept of place and community also includes an understanding of the land as commons that is at odds with the dominant culture in the United States.

Under slavery the Gullah lived in rigidly geometric settlements. Although this was the only settlement pattern the slaves had experienced, within the space of two generations after emancipation (post-1865) community forms transitioned to organic, roughly circular settlements based on family relationships. These settlements were held as common land, and over the course of several generations, the communities were owned in common by descendants at times numbering in the hundreds. Given the realities of US property law, this left the Gullah communities vulnerable to takeover by outsiders who capitalized on the weaknesses of the Gullah system of heirs property.

This paper looks at the concept of the common in Gullah tradition, and the effect that the legal system has on this cultural practice. While clearing title was one approach widely adopted for community protection, the form and pattern of the Gullah communities remained at odds with zoning and subdivision regulations. Adherence to a zoning and subdivision scheme are both required for the deeds and mortgages necessary for building new homes in the communities, therefore 15 years ago Gullah-specific zoning and subdivision regulations were adopted. The paper will explore the results of these regulations, and their effect on the growth and perpetuation of the Gullah communities and their system of commons.

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Elizabeth BrabecCultural Resource Documentation and PlanningOpen Space Analysis and ConservationHavana’s Urban Agriculture: Productive Land-scapes Within a City’s Crumbling Infrastructurehttp://works.bepress.com/carey_clouse/6
http://works.bepress.com/carey_clouse/6Thu, 24 Apr 2014 13:01:28 PDT
When Cuba found itself abruptly cutoff from trade with Soviet bloc in 1989, the country spun into an economic crisis of unprecedented severity. Suddenly lacking the oil, pesticides, and machinery with which to grow crops, and without access to the imported food that had previously sustained it, Cuba’s foodshed suddenly caved. Nearly twenty-five years later, this food crisis has vanished almost as swiftly as it arrived, in no small part due to the country’s innovative and widespread urban food production efforts. This research addresses the urban design framework that Cuba created in order to support urban agriculture initiatives, and suggests ideas, opportunities and innovation that could inform the development of productive landscapes in other parts of the world. Almost a dozen distinct types of urban farming approaches are visible in Havana, Cuba; these forms are a direct response to the 1989 food crisis and reflect the flexible modes of selfprovisioning that followed. These farm types also expose the context, constraints, and cultural norms unique to Havana’s urban environment, revealing changing attitudes towards urbanism in Havana’s capital city. At the same time, this urban agriculture system can be distilled into a readable organizational taxonomy; a kit of parts approach to food production that could well translate to other parts of the world. With natural and man-made disasters increasing in both frequency and severity, architects, landscape architects and planners can help cities plan for resilience by identifying replicable methods for self-sufficiency. This body of research focuses on the model urban farming programs underway in Cuba, which demonstrate self-sufficiency and food security in an oilscarce environment. The goal of this paper is to share Havana’s innovative urban agricultural interventions: food provisioning solutions that have been tested over the last twenty-five years and could be reproduced in other political and climatic zones.
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Carey ClousePresentationsThe Productive (Narrow) Lothttp://works.bepress.com/carey_clouse/5
http://works.bepress.com/carey_clouse/5Thu, 24 Apr 2014 12:44:39 PDTCaryn Brause et al.PresentationsResearching Architectural Salvage Through Experiential Educationhttp://works.bepress.com/carey_clouse/4
http://works.bepress.com/carey_clouse/4Thu, 24 Apr 2014 12:40:41 PDT
In the streets of post-Katrina New Orleans, it was trash heaps, rather than signage, that offered the promise of a homeowner’s return. Street-side mountains of soggy sheetrock, worn-out flooring and old windows provided a visual testament of rebuilding efforts inside; these piles of architectural debris framing gutted houses on almost every block. Such material waste regularly accompanies standard construction practices, where the yardstick of progress measures the number of dumpsters filled, and transformation implies resource depletion. This perverse line of thinking was called into question by one team of architecture students at Tulane University, who in the midst of the post-Katrina rebuilding of New Orleans, sought to illuminate demolition excesses and the untapped potential inherent to such processes. Their efforts to identify the type and scope of this material waste led to extensive field-based data collection, material cataloging and resource mapping. Once they had completed this exhaustive product index, the design team produced an alternative concept of one such trash heap, demonstrating the productive capacity of design thinking and the value of direct action in the face of wasteful rebuilding practices.
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Carey ClousePresentationsUrban Chicken Coopshttp://works.bepress.com/carey_clouse/3
http://works.bepress.com/carey_clouse/3Thu, 24 Apr 2014 12:34:14 PDTCarey Clouse et al.Poster Presentations